Where Gods Walk
by Fledgling
Summary: [Post DN, oneshot.] Those who use the Death Note go to neither Heaven nor Hell. If such is the case, where do they go and what is their fate there?


Word count: 2, 699

_Where Gods Walk_

It had to be true. It was too vivid to be a dream, and besides, Shinigami didn't dream properly.

You're hallucinating, the old, grey-bearded Shinigami said, shaking his head in a spindly, spineless way. How can you remember that? You're a Shinigami. If you died, you wouldn't be here right now.

But I did, he insisted. I was handsome and smart and everyone liked me.

Pssht, the old Shinigami said. He went back to his game of cards, and sighed half-heartedly as he lost to the icy-eyed death god with fingers longer than her skull. You're crazy, he said, as he gulped down a grey pear, sucking off the last of the taste from his round, bulbous fingers. He made a show of eating the fruit, one eye shut lazily, swaying his head to an invisible beat. He licked his wrist, and swallowed. "You're crazy," he murmured, now curled up in a ball and rocking back and forth, pulling his knobbly knees to his chest. "Crazy, you are." Then he chuckled, wheezing softly to himself. "Crazy Shinigami, huh? Now that's a new one."

And then the old Shinigami ignored him completely, stroking his worn little Death Note, sagging from his hip. It looked like it'd endured centuries and centuries and centuries of scribbling, and even held bite marks on a torn edge. Disappointed and even a little scornful, Kei waddled away, pulling out his own Death Note, glaring at the shiny cover, unbent spine, and sparse pages. Suddenly destructive, he yanked it this way and that, trying to make it look as old as the geezer's had been. But he wasn't alone-- less than a few seconds later, a tiny Shinigami he'd never seen before (it was so easy to get lost here, and new faces popped up every day) was chuckling with her unnervingly high voice, perched on a desolate-looking rock. Kei glared at her, but she only laughed harder; and actually raised a delicate hand to point at his face. Not a single word left her full lips. But it was clear enough that she was amused at his determination. Faking nonchalance, Kei knelt down right then and there, and scribbled the name of the first person he saw walking across the street, grinning with a vague appreciation as she was run over by a fruit truck. He saw her stealing a crockery pot a few human days ago.

She was still laughing. By now, the screechy noise was getting on his nerves, and he flicked his eyes coolly at her, hoping it would stop her. When it didn't, Kei simply shrugged and glared at the steps down to the human world, wondering if he could sneak by. But he wasn't allowed passage; it seemed that only those favoured by the King were allowed to go down, and he, unfortunately, was not. Chains hung softly from the peeling yellow walls, which oozed a prickly blue glow that bit at his eyes. Kei looked away, only to find himself staring at the bulging lips of the former. Her eyes were rimmed with a tan, sticky substance, and Kei's face curled into a grimace. Ugh. He sagged.

There was no privacy in the Shinigami world these days. It just got worse and worse. Kei haunted a trio of males, all with the same blank expressions, then slithered away as their game of I-Bet-I-Can-Guess-His-Lifespan-Before-You went from tolerable to excruciatingly tedious. Kei sighed, and lay sprawled on the ground, bony hands under his head. He yawned.

He wondered how he could get the old man to like him more. The Shinigami King was a lean, stupid creature, all oozing with jewellery that he'd stolen from the human realm. Kei didn't think much of his sense of taste: he'd never had a preference for frilly, heavy, overdressed clothing or jewellery, even when it looked decent on human females, and it most certainly was not flattering on the old geezer. But if there was some way that Kei could sneak into the human realm, perhaps on the back of another bored traveller, he might be able to bring back a gift that might charm the King. He didn't remember having stolen in his past life, but well, it wouldn't be too hard to learn, since he was so smart.

Kei was not particularly sure why he wanted to go visit the humans. Something fascinating about them…and even if the others all said that his so-called memories were only dreams, Kei was too intelligent to believe the spineless Shinigami that inhabited this world. He looked around, and scoffed. They were surely influenced by the greying state of things. All the walls were cracked, and the ground was covered with layers and layers of breathy ocher dust. Ash black pillars, which must have once towered great and majestic, supported nonexistent ceilings, and were scattered in stony corners. Nothing looked glorious. The floor was uncomfortably sandy, filled with splinters, and the lack of colour had a dampening effect.

How had things fallen so much? Kei had a sneaky suspicion that perhaps the current King was too lazy to maintain. It was hard to tell when a Shinigami would die, as the occurrences were rare and unexpected, usually. Most likely the previous king had just gotten tired of reigning. Kei cracked his neck, shifting on his back. Yes, that was probably it, he thought with a smirk. He snorted. Shinigami were once gods; even worshipped by humans, at one point in history. One glance at any museum of Egyptian history and artefacts told it all. How amusing to find that Ra looked exactly like ugly old Sleera, only he was male instead of female, and had a human body.

"Thinking again, Kei?"

He turned around to hear Rin's typical creaking as her wings slowly carried her down to his side. He'd never figured out where the noise come from; it might have been her ribs, which always looked dangerously close to collapse, but then again, it could have originated from her nostrils as well. He snorted, cracked his fingers, and turned to view her with a slow, calculating expression. "No," he said clearly, and snorted again. He blinked once, slowly. Calculatingly.

She said nothing, simply settled like a fat hen right next to him. "You lie," she said. "You were thinking." She shuffled a little closer to him, their bodies almost touching, but Kei drew back smoothly, avoiding contact. He thought he saw her pout, and her fingers twitch. His lips curled involuntarily. He still remembered the time those lofty, barbed ebony nails were wrapped around his arm, attempting to convey affection.

"So what?"

"You think too much."

"Like I said, so what?" _At least I do think, moron._

"It's bad for you."

"Who says?"

"I dunno." After a moment she said, "Me." Something like a giggle escaped her lips, and Kei shifted even further away, mortified. Was she actually enjoying this awful conversation?

"Who are you to say that?" he replied, after a moment's silence. Kei nearly ignored her, but some company was better than none, he supposed.

"I don't know," she sighed, flicking her long trails of black-violet hair. Pieces of it fell over her round, purple-rimmed eyes, and blocked her high cheekbones from view. "Just don't think so much."

Kei threw her a scornful look, snorting, and said nothing.

She sighed again, and slid to lie flat on the ground. But even with her arms spread to her sides, her bones looked deformed.

"What's wrong with your arm?" Kei asked suddenly.

"Hm?" She jerked, and Kei realized she'd actually fallen asleep. He was tempted to hit her, then changed his mind.

"Your arm," he said again, now gazing at it with a feral intensity. "What happened to it?"

"Huh?"

Wake up, stupid, he muttered under his breath. Kei nudged her instead.

"Wha--?"

He whacked her.

"All right, all right," she muttered to herself, and sat up, fixing him with a one-eyed glare. Then she fluttered her eyelashes promiscuously. "What?"

"Tell me what happened to your arm, Rin."

"My arm?"

"Yes."

She stared at it for a moment, then shrugged. "I don't know." Moved by his abrupt attention, Rin made as if to jump into his arms, but Kei shot up with lightning reflexes, and hovered, just out of her reach.

"You've always been like that?" he asked casually.

"Yeah," she replied half-heartedly, eyeing Kei pointedly, fingers twitching again. Kei just shrugged.

"Maybe you got hurt."

"No." She tried, not so subtly, to close the gap between them, resulting in a well-aimed kick at the ground from Kei, which blew clouds of red dust into her smooth, thin face. She coughed, and flapped her hand, awkwardly hitting her nose. Kei didn't notice, which only made her scowl further.

"Then how--" he started pleasantly.

"Whatever," she said, and abruptly edged farther away from him, wings advertently swinging outwards. Hissing coldly (and with some satisfaction), Kei lay down again, and ignored her. So she was annoyed with him, was she? He snorted. It didn't matter. Rin herself was annoying anyway. He started to get angry, then decided it took too much effort, and closed his eyes instead. Some food right now would be nice…barbecue chips, perhaps…apples were so tasteless…

---

Kei was more bored than ever.

After Rin disappeared in a huff, throwing hopeful looks over her shoulder, expecting him to follow, Kei drifted in and out of sleep. A clique of old, experienced, and rowdy Shinigami migrated to where he was lying, effectively startling him awake. Stumbling around like a pasty-faced idiot, Kei gaped sleepily at the human world, hoping something would brighten his mood. Nothing ever did.

He looked at his own reflection in a piece of broken azure glass, and trailed a deft finger along the side. He flicked the object upwards, caught it as it fell, and examined the glass. He scratched at it; a semblance of something dark and red fell off in his finger, and Kei's nose twitched.

He set the mirror back on the ground. It flashed light from a forgotten source, and revealed a thin, white-haired Shinigami, of moderate height and fair build. Kei found himself scrutinizing his reflection; he'd never seen himself before. It wasn't necessary. He leaned closer, and examined the round nose, sharp, narrow eyes, black pupils, sheets of straight, soft hair, though it was sparse. The surface of his body was deformed, worse than he'd ever seen on another Shinigami, as his skin was covered in what looked like boils and scars, like it had experienced fire in every lifetime before this. Uneasy, Kei drew back. He looked like he was rotting from the outside.

Kei looked at his arms. Sure, he'd known that his skin wasn't the greatest, but when the boils covered the entire surface of his body, face included, the result was magnified. Most Shinigami looked terrible, but he looked the worst he'd seen so far. And there was something missing about his reflection… snorting again, Kei thought it might have been because he had no jewellery. He felt suddenly bare.

Kei kicked at the mirror shard. It fell over, hit the ground with a _foom_, and lay still, dust exploding and coiling upwards beside its edges. The solitary Shinigami glared at it, then left, unfolding a set of huge, paper-thin wings the colour of the moon.

Now what should he do? He wanted to go steal some jewellery-- maybe he could wrestle some from those that had excess-- but that required both planning and effort. Both things Kei was not ready to deal with…yet.

Kei pulled out his Death Note, and ran his eyes over several potential subjects. He decided to tackle two today; one was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed man that raped a young woman in the bathroom, the other, a fat man who sat heavily in his chair and did nothing other than yell at his inferiors _and_ his superiors. The first one was to be killed in his living room, by his own wife, strangled with his tie. The second would die from a fatal disease reserved especially for the fat, doughnut-loving kind. He half-hoped his blood vessels would explode; that'd teach him for being so useless to German society. Kei chuckled to himself, maniacally, and ignored the others' catcalls, who were accusing him of being a "hardworking loser".

When the laughter died down, and the Shinigami returned to their boring variations of poker, he heard it. _Hyuk hyuk hyuk_, it went. Enough is enough, Kei thought. In fact, Kei was surprised that the other found him so amusing. Wasn't his throat sore from the continuous cackling? Kei pointedly ignored him, continuing to scrawl out names into the Death Note with long-winded accuracy. He added details, like how the power would go out just when the man died, and how he'd eat buy and eat barbecue chips before he got home. And how the fat man would eat ten doughnuts and caramel apples every day as he was dying. The details were for Kei's fun; he needed something to watch, after all. It was a low form of entertainment, but there was nothing better to do.

_Hyuk, hyuk hyuk. _

An entire page and two lines in the notebook later, just for those two stupid German men, and the idiot was still laughing. Kei felt several of those that had accused him of being a "geek", "hopeless", and "just plain stupid, why is he killing so many humans, there ain't going to be any left for us" crowd around with interest as the fat man (in typical fashion, without leaving his chair) called for "doughnut delivery", squawking and turning beet red when they told him no such thing existed.

But even the jostling behind him, and cheering wasn't enough to distract from the _Hyuk-hyuks_, which, though resembling background sound, was no less annoying than before.

Kei decided to kill a Korean person too, until the annoying Shinigami stopped. Someone _Kya kaa kaa_-ed behind him, and patted Kei on the back, saying something about how he was a lot of fun, and declared him his new best friend. Kei snorted. The fat man had started to eat doughnuts already; Kei could envision the buttons on his shirt slowly popping out, like stones from a slingshot. But the laughter was so self-satisfied, so mocking, that Kei couldn't even focus enough to check the Korean teenager's name. He twitched, and ran a claw over the Death Note. What was with that guy? With narrowed eyes, he half-turned, inconspicuously, to see the tall, hulking creature lurking behind him. Hovering.

"I see you haven't changed at all, Light." _Jolt._

Shinigami!

"I knew you were different." _Hyuk, hyuk._ "Interesting as always, Light. And still smart." _Hyuk, hyuk._

In the back of his mind, Light knew this would happen someday.

That bastard. He killed me, Kei thought. But the feeling was numb, the revelation mundane. It seemed, for Shinigami, that nothing was surprising anymore. It came from knowing all, Kei supposed. He did feel slightly special for being the only Shinigami that seemed to remember his roots (though he admit that he doubted himself, if only for a little while), but then again, Light had always been special.

His lips twisted. The irritation was there, but…out of reach, and Light was too slothful to reach onto that shelf and grab it. Ryuk and his lack of loyalty; he'd been a terrible pet.

Light never should have given him all those apples without setting a condition.

Light turned around completely now, eyes narrow, chin raised cockily, scrutinizing the heart-shaped earring, wide black-rimmed eyes, and dark blue body. He suddenly noticed the silence around him, the feeling of tensed breaths. Whispers would break out soon afterwards. Kei shifted under the curiosity muffling his spinning thoughts. Then he glowered.

And sighed, defeatedly.

"Well, you were the one that got me here, Ryuk. What did you expect?"

_Hyuk, hyuk._ A chuckle. "Nothing less than this, I guess, Kira."

Then he chuckled some more. The noise was swiftly drowned out by a series of _Kya kya kya_'s, as the one directly behind Kei wheezed and rolled on the ground, astonished.


End file.
